Please consider donating to Behind the Black, by giving either a one-time contribution or a regular subscription, as outlined in the tip jar to the right. Your support will allow me to continue covering science and culture as I have for the past twenty years, independent and free from any outside influence.

A new look at old data of Venus has added weight to the theory that the planet’s higher elevations are coated with a frost of heavy metals.

The research not only confirmed a radar brightening at higher altitudes, thus suggesting a frost coating of some kind, it also showed many dark spots whose cause remains completely unknown. As the article notes,

Years ago it was proposed that some sort of ferro-electric compound might be the cause of the brightening and the dark spots, but so far no specific compound has been identified which does the trick. Then again, with the surface of Venus being at almost 900 °F (500 °C) under more than 90 times the air pressure of Earth’s atmosphere at sea level, with occasional showers of acid, it’s not easy to test the properties of materials under Venusian conditions. “No one knows what explains the sudden darkness,” said Harrington, who will be presenting the work at the meeting of the Geological Society of America in Vancouver, B.C., on Monday, Oct. 20.

“Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America’s quest for the moon… Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America’s greatest human triumphs.”
–San Antonio Express-News